Posts Tagged 'branding blogs'

This post follows on from the wonderful series of tips that Matt‘s been running over the past few days. It’s partly a blog guide, partly a central resource to share RSS feeds, and partly a tribute to the people who inspire me.

Until recently, finding examples of best practice was hard work.

Happily, things have changed.

Today, the real problem is keeping up with all the great resources available.

While blogrolls have become a good way to find new feeds, I thought it might be more useful to give a bit more background to the sites that I find most informative and inspirational.

The sites I’ve featured below cover a range of marketing disciplines, and inform my thinking across all aspects of the marketing mix and beyond.

Their homepages will give you a good indication of what to expect, but I highly recommend you subscribe to the RSS feeds of the ones you like.

RSS feeds bring all your favourite web content together in one place, so that you don’t need to visit hundreds of different websites. If you’re not familiar with RSS, this simple introduction will help.

To take full advantage of RSS, you’ll also need a reader – an application that keeps track of new content and brings it all together. There are many free readers available on the net; I use Google Reader, which is nice and simple.

As Matt suggests, you’d do well to set aside a few hours each week to read things like this, in addition to your prescribed degree reading. You’ll find that they keep you up to date with the most recent marketing best practice, and provide you with plenty of examples for your assignments and exam papers.

In addition to their blogs, many of these people share great thoughts and links on twitter too. Their tweets are great sources of ‘bite-size’ best practice, so make sure you check them as well. Twitter offers RSS feeds of individual accounts too, so why not add your favourites to your RSS reader?

I hope you find all these links as useful as I do. Good luck!

Adliterate

A seminal resource for brand advice, curated by planner extraordinaire Richard Huntington. In his own words,

“Adliterate is dedicated to providing radical thinking for the brand advice business. It is concerned in the main by the future of advertising and the marketing communications industries, the impact of technology on communications and the nature of potent brands.”

Crackunit

A wonderful blend of marketing best practice with a distinctly digital perspective; musical meanderings; and general anthropological observation. It is the brainchild of Iain Tait, Creative Director at Poke London.

FlowingData

Data plays a huge part in marketing, and its importance grows every day. Making sense of all that data, and finding simple yet effective ways to share it with others, is a hugely valuable skill. Flowing Data is Nathan Yau‘s superb showcase of the best in data visualisation from around the globe. In his own words,

“FlowingData explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better.”

Herd

Mark Earls unearths “the hidden truth about who we are”; a superb, on-going study into our highly social nature and behaviour, with a strong marketing and advertising focus. Mark’s description goes something like:

“I was taught not to accept what I was told, but to challenge everything until a more compelling, better-evidenced and more workable descriptions of how things work emerges… My intent is to make things better by making our thinking about things better.”

Only Dead Fish

Neil Perkins strikes a great balance between thought-provoking editorial and more light-hearted features about various aspects of culture. He also runs a great Post of the Month poll, which is a great place to discover new sources of inspiration. In Neil’s own words, Only Dead Fish is:

“An advertising blog. And a planning blog. And a digital marketing blog. And often a communications blog. And sometimes a media blog. Or a social media blog. And the odd bit of design. And culture…”

Ruby Pseudo Wants A Word

Ruby’s blog is an anthropological delight, and is easily the best source of insights into young people all over the world. Alongside regular summaries of their various research projects, Ruby and team share valuable advice to companies and brands on how to engage younger audiences.

Russell Davies

It’s difficult to describe Russell’s blog, because it is truly eclectic; posts about marketing sit comfortably side by side with childhood nostalgia and postcards of days out. Whatever the topic, however, every post is worth savouring.

Seth’s Blog

This is a daily dose of inspiration from a marketing legend. Seth Godin has been inspiring me for more than 10 years, and is single-handedly responsible for showing me that marketing is about people, not process. He’s written quite a few books too, some of which he’s given away free on the web.

Springwise

With 8,000 trend spotters in over 70 countries worldwide, Springwise is the leading resource for keeping track of business and marketing innovation from around the globe. In their own words,

“Springwise scans the globe for the most promising business ventures, ideas and concepts that are ready for regional or international adaptation, expansion, partnering, investments or cooperation. We ferociously track more than 400 global offline and online business resources, as well as taking to the streets of world cities, digital cameras at hand.”

Talent Imitates, Genius Steals

Faris Yakob has consistently been one of my most valuable sources of inspiration. His expansive knowledge, awesome vocabulary, and unbounded enthusiasm for almost all things combine to create a tapestry of strategic wonder and random entertainment. In Faris’s own words,

“I’m a strategist and a geek. I’m trying to work out how we communicate in a networked world, how we can make people happy, and how we can make awesome stuff that is useful, or entertaining, or both.”

Trendwatching

The sibling of business trend site Springwise, Trendwatching captures the more ‘human’ developments within culture and society. As they put it,

“trendwatching.com is an independent and opinionated trend firm, scanning the globe for the most promising consumer trends, insights and related hands-on business ideas. For the latest and greatest, we rely on our network of hundreds of spotters in more than 120 countries worldwide.”